"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." Orwell

"Men are so simple of mind and so dominated by immediate needs that the deceitful man can easily find those ready to be deceived."
Machiavelli

"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.." H.L. Mencken

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Sunday Column

The concerted efforts of Congressional Republicans to sabotage The Affordable Care Act, maybe more than anything else, show us how venal, mendacious, and thoroughly despicable they've become; how unconcerned about the common weal. A little more mildly, that's what my latest column in our local newspaper is saying:

Forget the cynical theatrics of House Republicans voting thirty-nine
times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and forget what it says about how they
view their voters. (Hint: rhymes with mullible.) Let’s consider a party whose only
legislative efforts lately have been to sabotage the first serious attempt in
generations to provide all citizens of the richest country there ever was with
access to affordable health care. Sabotage is best word other than the one that
really applies. It starts with a “T” and that’s all I’m gonna say about it.

Unless you’re selfish and uncaring (you’re not), you must
have some concern, on some level, for the fact that there are tens of millions
in our country who can’t afford, much less have entry into, our health care
system. It must bother you at least a little that whereas at its best, health
care in the U.S. is as good as it gets, when parceled out among all Americans
it falls near the bottom of developed countries in delivery, cost, and
outcomes. Maybe you buy the argument favored by today’s Republican leaders,
including their most recent presidential nominee, that people can go to the
emergency room, so there’s no problem. Maybe you figure it doesn’t affect you
that such care is the least efficient, least effective, and most expensive.
You’d be mistaken. Since people who can’t afford it don’t pay, their enormous
costs are transferred to those that do, in hospital charges and insurance
premiums. It’s a huge hidden tax on us all.

No matter where you stand along the spectrum of concern,
there are plenty of reasons, eleemosynary or otherwise, to agree our health
care system needs fixing. Top of the list: unchanged from how it’s been, it’d
bankrupt us. And whereas Republican legislators seem to think they can solve
the problem simply by ignoring poor people, they’re demonstrably wrong, for
reasons just mentioned.

So President Obama and Democrats, with literally no help
from Republicans, made an attempt to fix it. Even though their template was
originally a Republican plan, disappointing liberal Democrats in the process
(myself included, because some form of single-payer -- mark my words if you
live that long -- is the only economically viable system in the long run), they
still got zero accommodation from the opposition, who now threaten to shut down
the government over it. And why do you think that is? They can make all the
disingenuous claims they want, parroted endlessly on Fox “news” and right-wing
radio; but their real reason was simply and starkly stated years ago, by then Republican
strategist and now Fox talking head William Kristol, who warned that if
Democrats got health care reform they’d have a legislative majority for
generations. Party politics sabotaging the country. Shall I offer that T-word
again?

The Affordable Care Act is a large one, Republicans like to
point out, in shocked innocence. Any bill that tries to address such a gigantic
problem, and which, yes, is blindingly complex and, as lawmakers of both
parties are wont to do, kisses way too many backsides, is bound to have
problems and unforeseen consequences. But it’s a decent beginning. Its aims are
honorable, and, to the horror of Republicans, it’s working: states adopting its
requirements are seeing dramatic drops in insurance premiums. So wouldn’t you
think, no matter of which party you were a member, that the most useful (let’s
call it “patriotic”) approach would be to give the process a chance, finding
solutions as issues become evident? Doesn’t the first legitimate attempt to fix
one of America’s most portentous and challenging problems deserve that much?
Isn’t that what an honorable opposition party would do, if it actually cared
about the public interest?

At the very least, you’d think those who are literally
trying to kill the baby in its crib would hold thoughtful and workable
alternatives in one hand while swinging their sword with the other. But they
don’t. Many (public servants!) are even refusing to help their constituents get
information. Their latest and even more outrageous abomination is a dishonest
effort to keep people – people who’d benefit enormously -- from signing up.
That’s the very definition of cruelty. For purely political reasons their only
concern is the destruction of Obamacare. Clearly, they’re desperate to do so
before people realize its value; and they undertake their carnage with
confidence, knowing from experience -- paraphrasing the words of their greatest
president -- they can fool enough of the people enough of the time.

For The Sake of My Sanity

Some will know me from my other blog, "Surgeonsblog." Of late I've given over to frothing at the mouth as the world descends into stupidity, and our politics and our citizens seem, in numbers enough to be meaningful, unable to see it. So for now I'm leaving surgery writing behind, if for no other reason than to defuse and diffuse my unrelenting sense of doom, and with no expectation of making a difference. These are things that, to me, are obvious. Except that, apparently, they aren't.

RWS™

RWS™: For those who drop by here in the middle, and wonder what it means: it's my shorthand for Right Wing Screamers, which includes such a long list it's tiresome to type it. (I distinguish these blowhards from thoughtful conservatives, of whom I sort of take it on faith that there must still be some.) You know who I mean: Palin, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Breitbart (RIP), Malkin, Savage, Levin, Ingraham, Doocey (more of a drooler than a screamer), Hewitt, Goldberg, Gingrich, Kristol, Scarborough (+/-), Bachmann, Inhofe, Bond, Broun, Boehner, Kelley, Santorum, Cain. To name but a few. Behold them in their unrepentant disregard for reality: the RWS™